All My Rivers Lead to Your Ocean.

Six in the morning,

You leave graveyard shift complete,

Scrubs off khakis on.

Terror

They tell you in medical school ‘Don’t listen to the terror’,

The sharp pull of a dizzy heart,

Recognizing the face of another.

The gloves can hide your human skin,

But they cannot shield your eyes,

Nor the flesh that you tear through.

Nightly sinew fights.

In the waiting room there sits a wife,

Three children clambering on.

She hushes them with vending machine promises –

Crinkled candy calm.

Inside her love my fingers rest,

Poised above a clot –

Never needless my needle nicks,

Blood a-gush.

Nick’s last beat.

Foil reflects the young ones smiles.

They bicker. Oh what to select.

War cry chorus; G19!

They weren’t to know of their father’s death,

Their eyes are just like his –

Not lifeless as my memory interjects.

Were I to take an educated guess;

I’d say their innards were much the same.

They did not know the blood was his.

Speckled across my breast.

They were choosing which sweet to digest.

They did not feel his organs halt,

As I did.

But there she remains,

Mother Fear,

Anguish etched into her brow.

The room passes slowly:

My funeral march on pause.

I let her cherish the blessed unknown,

For one more miraculous minute until she can’t.

They tell you ‘Don’t listen to the terror’ so that you keep a steady hand,

But what they forget to mention is in a hospital,

Terror is the only hope we have.

After a long shift,

You fall asleep at the wheel,

Only for a beat.

Crash

‘Stop looking at me like that’

Screams her softly furrowed brow.

The crease above her nose,

Her lips,

Her eyes,

Her all.

You can’t breathe.

When you look at her.

Snuggled next to the whites of her eyes,

Are pools of a royal blue.

So inviting in this summer heat,

You wish to splash within each iris.

Conquer her seas.

But you can’t breathe.

Down from the crest of her perfect nose,

Dwell two pouting lips.

Hues of new blood,

Oxidizing bliss in each kiss.

Red bled raw,

She’s all you have.

An angel walking on solid ground.

Metal scrapes a haunting choir,

Two rings entwined side-by-side,

Marriage is a heaven scape,

With this woman on your arm.

The flow of locks a golden tint,

The beat of music leads their dance,

Bu bum bu bum bu bum and stop.

Hands harmonious dolphins in play,

Rising to the sun.

You could get lost in her embrace,

You fade within your skull,

She sings to you as she lets you go.

You could not breathe.

Now all is lost.

The winter day cruel,

Darkness not allowing me,

Not to see you drown.

Eulogy

Regress from the blue,

How angry shades can pale,

As I broke through your swell

I was left with nothing at all

Arrived on the other end of the break.

To a reception of one.

Just black.

Cold hard screaming nothing.

Then black.

Where your eyes roll back,

You see the life locked in your skull.

A shackled mess of regret,

A heartbroken swell of girls.

Were you told you weren't to live,

Back you would have ran,

Kissed the blondes and stayed up late -

Grades, awards, all meant none.

Yet here you are, myself and I.

A half-lived wasted man,

Whose only impact on the world,

Was a fifty second news segment,

That his wife broke down to,

As the police had yet to reach her door.

I’m sorry for the life I lost,

Not just that already passed,

The children that I will not make,

The food,

The laughs,

The dance.

I will decay into the soil,

I shall be scattered amongst the grass.

Then day-by-day I’ll be forgotten,

When all is nothing,

And all is black.

Why Greetings new soul,

Welcome to the stardust realm,

I have been waiting.

Epilogue

I am The Moon, I rule The Sky,

Where all souls converge in assent,

Some call me ‘Reaper Grim’,

Others ‘God’,

Others ‘Death’ –

Your souls are fuel for my lunar base,

I feed them to my cogs,

And here eternally you whir,

Controlling tides,

And guiding night.

I am The Tide, I rule The Sea,

All your rivers,

To my ocean, lead.

And there life dwells, beyond your eyes,

Perfected over eons of time.

For depths untouched by human war,

But raped by tanks from human shores.

I gave you life,

I let you be.

But drop by drop –

You’re poisoning me.

I am The Sun, I rule The Earth,

Allow for you to breathe,

Warm your crops,

Your skin,

Your world,

And ask for nothing in return.

Although we may seem worlds apart,

We’re not so different you and I,

Both are finite,

And what you don’t know yet;

Is my time has come,

And soon will thine.

My dark side is blessed,

As it never has to watch,

The sickness of Earth.